The dry bones in the glass vessels and the words on the metal plaques, every detail exuded a strange aura.
T3088.
T4901.
T5029.
These serial numbers seemed unrelated. If there was any pattern, it was that the prefixes T3, T4, and T5 were different, seemingly representing different levels.
On the entire wall, there were only three glass vessels marked with T6 serial plaques, but the vessels were empty, assuming they weren’t damaged.
In terms of rarity, T6 should be the rarest, so the highest level should be T6 and the lowest T3.
Countless glass vessels were neatly arranged, like coffins embedded in the stone wall.
This underground abyss was like a huge mass grave.
A mass grave of bionic bodies.Zard looked at the dark surroundings and shrank his neck.
Qing Chen also discovered that this guy was exceptionally brave when facing matters of the mortal world but exceptionally timid when facing matters related to the underworld.
“No wonder Huǒzhǒng Company built a secret base here. It turns out they were conducting such inhumane experiments,” the Grand Elder exclaimed, “If the Federation finds out, they’ll be condemned by everyone.”
When the words "bionic bodies' appeared below the glass vessels, the importance of this underground base was already evident.
And its serial number also showed how terrifying the scale of the experiments here had been.
Over three thousand bionic humans? What a huge undertaking!
Qing Chen looked up at the cliffs on both sides of the underground river. Wherever the beam of his flashlight shone, there were densely packed glass vessels, seemingly extending to the sky.
He could even imagine that thousands of years ago, these vessels still contained complete human beings, filled with green or blue liquid. They were like embryos and wombs, nurturing deformed lives.
The glass vessels were all intact. Over time, the bionic humans inside had all turned into skeletons in the sealed vessels.
“Can the Restorative Shroud restore the skeletons to their original forms? If we can, can we see what people from a thousand years ago looked like?” Zard curiously asked. “I wonder if they were men or women?”
Qing Chen calmly replied, “Judging from the pelvis and pubic bones, they are all men. Firstly, the male pelvis is larger at the top and smaller at the bottom, shaped like a funnel. The female pelvis is short and wide, cylindrical. Secondly, the male pubic bone is an inverted V-shaped bite, and the female pubic bone is an inverted U-shaped bite. If this was a normal experimental site, the types of bionic humans should be diverse to collect various data. But all the skeletal models here are adult males. So I suspect that the bionic humans they wanted to create were war machines.”
As he spoke, Qing Chen smashed a glass vessel. The bones inside quickly oxidized and turned gray after the vessel shattered.
“Huh,” Dayu frowned. “These glass vessels have maintained their airtightness for so many years. What about the liquid inside? I thought it was a leak that caused their deaths.”
Qing Chen said, “Let's make a bold guess. This was once one of Huǒzhǒng Company’s most important secret experimental sites, where they created a large number of bionic humans. But one day, an accident occurred here, and someone manually closed all the experimental vessels and drained the nutrient solution and respiratory solution inside.”
At this moment, Qing Chen's beam was still sweeping back and forth. The next second, he froze.
Everyone followed the beam and found that on the eighteenth layer of the glass vessels, one vessel was broken.
“Was it accidental damage, or did someone inside get out?” Dayu frowned.
“Wait for me,” Qing Chen said, and climbed up easily, as if walking on flat ground on the rock wall.
Soon, Qing Chen slowly came down. “There are no remains inside the glass vessel, and the metal plaque outside has been forcibly torn off.”
The glass vessel was empty!
Everyone was shocked. Qin Yiyi quickly hid behind Qing Chen.
They all understood what this meant. A bionic human survived that catastrophe years ago and actively broke the glass vessel to get out!
The Grand Elder glared at Qin Yiyi. The little ancestor was actually being timid. When you went to the sanctuary at the Fire Pit, you weren't this cowardly. You used human skulls as lanterns back then!
Qing Chen whispered, “Let's move on, but be careful.”
“Even if he survived back then, he should have left here or died here,” the Grand Elder wondered. “This base has been abandoned for at least hundreds of years. Nothing could possibly survive.”
“Hard to say,” Qing Chen shook his head. “Hopefully, I'm overthinking.”
Only Knight knew that Huǒzhǒng had indeed created theoretically immortal human-like creatures, not only Ren Xiaosu, but also those experimental subjects who had once wreaked havoc on humanity.
Those experimental subjects all achieved coexistence with cancer cells. Ren Xiaosu himself was Subject 001, so theoretically, as long as nothing unexpected happened, they could live for thousands or tens of thousands of years.
This was true immortality.
Qing Chen picked up a bone and handed it to Dayu. “Take this with you. I’ll send it back to City 10 and have Scientist No.2 take a look to see if anything can be researched.”
The muscle tissue of these skeletons was gone, so the Restorative Shroud could not restore the lost substance, just as it could not restore Qing Chen’s chest wound.
But the airtightness of the glass vessels was so good that something from the bones might be able to extract DNA.
Qing Chen scanned the glass vessels several times, confirming that only one was broken, before continuing inward. On the way, he whispered a few words to Zard, making Dayu frown.
The road became wider, but the river's turbulence and width remained unchanged.
When everyone looked at the dark river again, they felt a little uneasy, afraid of something lurking inside.
The next moment, the underground abyss suddenly opened completely. In front of them, a huge human building appeared, like a giant stadium.
The entire exterior of the building was made of metal, rusty and weathered.
“Let's go in and take a look,” Qing Chen said. But he suddenly turned back to look at the abyss cliff behind him, feeling as if someone was watching him but making no sound.
Qing Chen's beam swept past, but found nothing unusual.
It was as if a lizard-like reptile was quickly hiding in the darkness of the cliff corner.
“What's wrong?” Dayu asked.
“Nothing,” Qing Chen shook his head.
Everyone entered the building. At the entrance were a large number of security devices, indicating that entering the building was once very difficult.
As they walked inside, they found more scattered skeletons on the ground.
Qing Chen looked at the ground. “Many shell casings, and bullet holes on the walls. It seems a battle took place here, and everyone was killed suddenly.”
Dayu cautiously looked around, and Qin Yiyi also placed her hand on the hilt of her black knife, carefully guarding Qing Chen.
The girl seemed to be hiding behind Qing Chen out of fear, but she was actually protecting him at close range.
The Grand Elder came to her side and whispered, “Does he still need your protection? That Knight doesn’t eat people. That’s quite principled!”
Qin Yiyi retorted, “He’s injured! His wounds haven’t healed yet!”
The Grand Elder muttered, “Only you think he needs protection. Be clear-headed. He’s not the little servant you knew before.”
“Strange, was it an internal purge by Huǒzhǒng Company, or an attack from outsiders?” Dayu squatted down to examine the corpses, puzzled.
“What’s strange is that there are no bullet marks on these people,” Qing Chen analyzed. “If it was a large-scale battle, bullets would leave marks on the bones, but there aren’t any. I suspect they weren’t fighting enemies with Firearms. A beast that wasn’t afraid of Firearms attacked here.”
Everyone suddenly remembered the broken glass vessel and felt a chill down their spines.
“Let’s act quickly. The Chen Family might find this place. We don’t have much time,” Qing Chen said. “Let's find the data center. That’s our goal. Thousands of years ago, most data was still backed up on paper. This is a closed environment, so many things will have been preserved. When we find computers, take all the hard drives away.”
Everyone searched, and found that a quarter of the building was sealed off by metal gates, and they didn’t know how to get in or what was locked inside.
The data center was also locked, seemingly with complex mechanical locks requiring special keys.
Qing Chen carefully examined the door and found claw marks on it. When he saw those marks, he could almost imagine the sound of sharp claws scraping against the metal, making his teeth ache.
“How do we get in?” Dayu asked. “This metal is very hard. We can't break it open.”
As soon as he finished speaking, he saw Qing Chen reach out and lightly twist the handle, opening the data center door.
Dayu: “Damn…”
To their surprise, inside the huge data center, two skeletons lay on the ground. Beside them, all the paper documents had been shredded by a shredder and mixed together, and a small incinerator was full of ashes.
Qing Chen said, “I just looked at the lock. It was locked from the inside. These two people should be Huǒzhǒng Company members responsible for destroying all the data and evidence in this secret base, and they starved to death inside.”
These two people used their lives to ensure that the data was completely destroyed.
Forget the data in the incinerator, even the shredded pieces wouldn’t be possible to put back together for ten or twenty years.
But the Restorative Shroud could restore all the data here.
Qing Chen looked at the documents in front of him. “Gather all the shredded documents and put them into the Restorative Shroud. Sweep out the ashes from the incinerator, don't miss a bit.”
Everyone turned the incinerator upside down, and the Grand Elder used a brush to scrape the ashes little by little.
After closing the Restorative Shroud, everyone sat in the data center waiting.
Qing Chen asked, “What kind of existence is Huǒzhǒng Company? The various Conglomerates rarely evaluate them in their own historical records?”
“It’s a very complex company,” Dayu recalled. “Their company’s purpose is to preserve the human race, to find new ways for human genes to continue. However, their way of protecting humans is somewhat extreme. In Ren Xiaosu’s era, there were internal divisions within Huǒzhǒng. The combat personnel followed Ren Xiaosu to the northwest, while the scientific researchers remained in the Central Plains and were destroyed along with the AI Ling. So, the Forbidden Artifact Tribunal they later spawned is dedicated to containing Forbidden Artifacts and Metahumans to prevent humanity from being destroyed by Forbidden Zones and Forbidden Artifacts.”
“By extreme protection methods, do you mean they conducted many inhumane experiments?” Qing Chen asked.
“Yes, their experiments have always had huge problems. And in order to extract genes, the ruling faction also frantically captured Metahumans, hoping to obtain new human genes from them,” Dayu replied.
“It seems to be a very cruel organization,” Qing Chen nodded.
An hour passed, the Restorative Shroud opened, and all the shredded documents were restored. However, there were still some holes in the incinerated paper documents.
After all, brushing out the ashes would inevitably leave some inside the incinerator. It could be restored to this extent, thanks to the Kingdom.
The Chen Family helped eliminate the human-faced insects, and the Kingdom provided the Forbidden Artifact that restored the data. Thank you, Mother Nature.
The Grand Elder said, “There are probably tens of thousands of pages of documents in the Restorative Shroud, and they’re in a disordered mess. When will we be finished? We can't stay here for years.”
Qing Chen glanced at him and quickly went through all the documents. In his mind, he quickly classified, organized, summarized, and sorted the more than 30,000 pages of documents.
Restoring their logical order.
Seeing that Qing Chen had gone through the documents so quickly and even closed his eyes, the Grand Elder realized that things were not simple.
As they say, when Knight closes his eyes, even ghosts and gods are afraid. The Grand Elder realized he was about to be slapped in the face.
Qing Chen opened his eyes again and extracted the key points for everyone:
“Huǒzhǒng Company has already developed medical methods to coexist with cancer, but during large-scale promotion in Laboratory 039, it was found that the success achieved in Subject 001 was accidental. Laboratory 039 encountered a crisis and requested headquarters to approve the destruction or permanent closure of the laboratory.”
Qing Chen looked at everyone. “Could this Laboratory 039 be where the deity Ren Xiaosu was?”
He continued, “Huǒzhǒng Company guessed that it was because of Ren Xiaosu's own strength that individual cases of success occurred. So they built a huge secret laboratory here to conduct artificial cancer through genetically modified bionic bodies and retest the feasibility and stability of medical methods.”
Among them, a large number of documents recorded clinical trial reports, and the specific data was stored on the hard drives in Area A1.
Area A1, which was the area sealed off in this laboratory.
At the end of the documents, Dr. P of Huǒzhǒng Company warned everyone that the experiment was very dangerous and to proceed with caution.
Dr. P emphasized “dangerous” more than ten times at the end, showing how much he valued it.
Qing Chen said, “Currently, the first precious document in this laboratory is how to allow humans to coexist with cancer cells. Unfortunately, only one case was successful, the deity Ren Xiaosu himself. The rumors are true; it was Huǒzhǒng Company that helped Ren Xiaosu become a deity. The documents show that Ren Xiaosu's cell nucleus has been completely transformed into a heteromorphosis nucleus. During his time in Laboratory 039, he could freely materialize things he had imagined. Eventually, due to some method, this ability was temporarily suppressed. However, the documents also state that in Area A1, there are still 3 drops of the deity's blood, which are Ren Xiaosu's gene samples transported from Laboratory 039.”
“The documents say that a total of 9 drops of the deity's blood were transported to the base. 3 drops were stolen, 3 drops were used, and 3 drops remain. We don't know who stole them or where the 3 used drops went.”
This trip to the underground abyss was worthwhile, just for the medical achievement and three drops of the deity's blood.
Qing Chen looked around at everyone. Dayu, Zard, the Grand Elder, and Qin Yiyi felt that “it seemed useful” upon hearing the information.
But only Chen Jiazhang knew how important this was!
Because the technology to coexist with cancer was one of the pieces of the puzzle to becoming a deity!
Black True Sight Eye, cancer, cancer coexistence technology, Knight's body, Qing Chen only needs cancer to become a deity!
No, no.
It must be a complete Knight's body, which means Qing Chen must complete all Eight Trials of Life and Death to take this path.